Now more than ever we need a bit of positivity in our lives, am I right?! Because of that, we are rolling out our Friday High 5’s where we will take you through the top 5 highlights by category from the week. And because we can’t actually high five each other, we’ll do it virtually! We’ll cover the highlights from the 5 categories below.
Design Related High Five
Product-Related High Five
DIY Home Improvement Related High Five
Family and Friends Related High Five
General Related High Five
Make sure to get to the General Related High Fives where we take you through out COVID journey, which we will do each week.
Design Related High 5
Each week we will highlight what we feel is high five worthy from a design standpoint!
This week’s design highlight is Sherwin Williams launch of the new Emerald Designer Edition! This paint line is going to be a game-changer, you guys! It is their finest formula, available in 200 nuanced colors designed to deliver flawless results with the best hide yet.
SW Minimal + Modern Emerald Designer Edition | EH Design
It not only offers 200 new amazing paint colors but the product itself is the whites white base to mix the hues to make the colors, the leveling agent in the paint makes for a flawless look, and to top it off, it comes in every finish that is super washable! GAME CHANGER! Who want to get painting?!
Product Related High 5
The product-related high five is a compilation of our 5 favorite products from this week.
EH Design’s Favorite Design 5 of the week | EH Design
They are as follows:
Caron Settee
I so badly want to incorporate this into a design! That or put it in my own own. It’s so beautiful. If you purchase and incorporate, make sure to send me pictures!
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2. MADDOX CABINET
You’re going to see this beauty incorporated in an upcoming clients home office! I cannot wait to see this space come together. The inside drawers and shelves are perfect for office storage.
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3. Sherwin Williams Emerald Designer Edition Paint
This is kind of cheating to mention it twice, but I literally can’t wait to start to use these!
Emerald Designer Edition | SW New Paint Line | EH Design
4. Mix & Match Fabric Covered Decorative Books
This is a secret give-a-way! I am obsessed with The House of Elements shop and will continue to get books from her!
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5. Clive Lamp Base
We are always on the hunt for good lighting and lately, that is good table lamps! This beautiful baby you will be seeing in an entry that we are designing currently. We can’t wait to show you!
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DIY Home Improvement High Five
We are going to cheat again and post about a project qwe did in the last couple of weeks. We refinished out nightstands and dresser. Check out our Instagram for all the details on it under the highlight “Bedroom DIY”!
Bedroom Furniture Redo | DIY Home Impovement High 5 | EH Design
Family and Friends Related High Five
Obviously our time with family and friends is limited at this time so what are ways that you guys have stayed in touch.
We’ve stayed in touch with friends and family through:
Messenger Kids – This app has been great for the kids to stay in touch with their friends and allows them to see their faces, play games with them and just talk.
Zoom – We all know Zoom. This type of communication isn’t going anywhere and so appreciated during a time like this.
General Related High Five
We are going to take this general high five to discuss our COVID experiences and hopefully find high five worthy stuff to share with you! Not only do I want to document this time, but I want to share it with all of you so you know you aren’t alone in this struggle too. There is pain, anger, sadness, hurt…all of it, and we’re all feeling it together, and together we will get to the other side of it.
From the top…
So, where do I even begin…Let’s start from my COVID beginning and I will fill in each week from there. Sound good?
So, my parents are retired and religiously watch the news. We tune in but not as retired people do. 😉 I remember driving, as I typically am while talking to my mom on the phone when she kept talking about Coronavirus. I listened, of course, but wasn’t yet alarmed. When she mentioned that it would start affecting travel, I remember saying, “Oh come on! This is ridiculous. It’s not that bad.”
That has stuck with me because within a couple of short weeks, it rapidly got worse, and ultimately travel was affected.
Our 8-year-old daughter was then pulled from school. Ok, now this is progressively getting worse. I felt an obligation to pull my youngest 2 (5 and 1.5 yrs.) from daycare too, so I did. For 2 weeks we stayed home and waited it out, not going anywhere but our home and for walks, only to find out that at the end of those 2 weeks, Minnesota was going to be put on a 2 week Shelter in Place. Yikes…2 more weeks?! OK, we got this, I kept telling myself! I came up with a lot of mantras during this time, as I am sure you all did too!
The Emotion Behind it all…
So, to talk about the emotion behind all of it during this time, I had spent those weeks mourning the loss of many things – the safety net of a healthy family, gatherings with friends and family, the safety of a thriving business, the quiet and productive workdays, teachers teaching and caring for our children, life as it was…because ultimately the reality that things weren’t going back to normal had finally sunk in. Life was going to change and we had to come to grips with it.
I felt a lot of panic in those first couple weeks, as I am sure you all have as well. They say that something like this is equivalent to mourning the loss of a loved one. I found this to be 100% correct. Unfortunately, the mourning was for a lot of things that magnified it all.
Up until last week, I was in a complete tailspin trying to keep my head above water with caring for our littles, teaching our oldest, keeping up the household, running my business, and so on and so on! Simply put, my life had been flipped upside down and I didn’t know which way was up. It was a full-on survival mode.
The winds have died down a bit…
Sunday, April 12th Mitch and I made the decision to put the littles back into daycare the following day. The school had that month, putting systems into place for the safety and health of the children, families, and staff and we felt ready to put them back in. Don’t think there isn’t a load of guilt I feel each day I drive them there, because there is. But we made our choice and feel damn good about it. – Still trying to convince myself, see…;)
This is the first week I have felt like the winds have died down just a bit and I can breathe. I can actually take full breathes that fills my lungs, not those shallow breathes that don’t seem to go past your throat.
So that is where I am in this COVID journey. There is a long road ahead but the storms have calmed for me a bit, at least for the time being, so I will hold on to that. That and the fact that we all still have our health.
This will end and there will be a new beggining, I’m sure of that.